Monday, January 5th, 2026
Monday, January 5th, 2026: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Silver, Southeast Arizona.
After last Sunday’s breakthrough – hiking to a peak with a spectacular view, after months of frustrating “recovery” hikes – I was hoping for more of the same. But most spectacular hikes on my list either involve too much distance and elevation, or too much bushwhacking. I finally decided to drive over to Arizona yet again, for a peak hike that, when I’m in top condition, would only take a half day. At this stage in my recovery it would advance me a notch, to nearly ten miles out-and-back and over 3,000 accumulated vertical feet.
The day was forecast to be cloudy but with mild temps. However, for the third day in a row – after getting both flu and COVID shots four days ago – I woke up with a migraine and a body that ached from head to feet. Side effects are not supposed to last that long, but it was Sunday and I was not going to miss my hike.
This is the most popular trail in the most popular part of the range, so despite the winter season and gloomy skies, I wasn’t surprised to find three vehicles at the trailhead. A quarter of a mile up I passed a retired-looking couple returning – most people are only in shape for the first mile or so.
I was making good time – clearly recovering my cardio capacity. I’d hoped endorphins would reduce my pain, but by the time I’d gone about 3/4 of a mile I knew I would need pain meds. I’d gotten a late start, and it was also time for a snack. And stopping to dig in my pack, I discovered that I’d failed to bring any food.
This has never happened before! I use a list to pack for a hike. Everything I need is at hand, in its regular place. But I’ve gotten in the bad habit of packing first and checking my list afterwards. And at home this morning, with the splitting headache making me dizzy and confused, I’d just glanced at the food part and assumed it was already packed.
A foundation of my healthy lifestyle is to eat for activity, in a weekly cycle timed with my hikes and workouts. I avoid eating more than I’ll need, but before, during, and after strenuous activity, I always eat and drink what my body needs to recover and build muscle, but no more. There on the mountainside, my whole body hurting, I knew if I turned back to get food at the country store, I wouldn’t be able to complete the hike. I also knew I must be carrying a little fat, somewhere, that my body could turn into energy to finish this damn hike.
So in the title above, “climbing” is an adjective, and “fast” is a noun.
As soon as I resumed hiking in this familiar high desert habitat, I began seeing it in the way I’d been trained long ago – as a natural cupboard, potentially full of provisions. What was here that I could eat? It’s January, one of the worst months for plant food. There would be lots of pinyon pine up above, but the cones would’ve opened months ago, any remaining nuts shriveled and dried. I found one trapped inside a cone but almost cracked a tooth on it, it was so hard.
I immediately thought of cactus fruit. There were lots of prickly pear, but the only remaining fruit were all shriveled up. I’d never heard of anyone eating the yellow fruit of the cane cholla, and there were few here, but I finally came upon one and checked it out. Most of the remaining fruit were unripe, but looking closely at a few yellow ones, it appeared there were no glochids, so I pulled them off and cut them open.
Glochids are tiny, almost invisible hairlike spines that surround the areoles of cacti, where the hard spines emerge. The fruit can be free of spines, but the dozens of tiny glochids will still work their way into your skin and torment you for days, so cactus fruit are normally handled with some kind of tool. My desperation, and the darkness of the day, lulled me into complacency.
After cutting the fruit in half and scraping out the rock-hard seeds, I turned the fruit inside out and scraped at the pulp with my teeth. Even in the greener fruit it was sweet, but there was precious little of it.
I dumped the rest in my shirt pocket and resumed hiking. And now my fingers began burning – glochids after all!
The first 2-1/2 miles climbs 1,200 vertical feet to a shoulder on the north slope, where the trail turns back almost due south into a deep cove. At the top, colorful cliffs and rock formations span both sides of a steep drainage forested with ponderosa pines and Douglas-firs. The trail switchbacks and traverses toward and through the rocks, then out onto the opposite slope. The complicated stretch through those rocks is the most interesting part of the hike.
Emerging onto the opposite slope on a steep stretch of trail, I spotted a leashed dog ahead, and looked for a place to step off and let the owner by. It was a twenty-something couple – they both smiled and thanked me. Past there, it’s a long traverse across a steep slope with dramatic rock formations looming above, eventually entering a patch of fir forest that was particularly dark today.
Approaching the west side of the peak, the trail finally switches back eastward behind huge ramparts of stone, where ten switchbacks of nearly equal length lead you up past the rocks toward the crest. After the long slog on the switchbacks it’s always a surprise to find yourself facing only a short, easy walk to the saddle.
The true peak is a short distance east, but the old fire lookout has the view – if you can handle the precarious, vertiginous concrete steps. The lookout itself burned decades ago – all that’s left now is the concrete foundation.
I’ve been up here in all seasons – there would normally be snow now – and never tire of it.
The only thing I’d brought with any nutritional value was a packet of electrolyte supplement, containing sugar. I’d consumed that hours ago, but didn’t feel hungry. But I did expect my body to start complaining on the way down. As per last week, I dug out the trekking poles to make it easier on my injured knee. And I finally figured out how to use them – which is basically not to push down on them at all, just dangle and tap – until you reach a rocky or steep point where they can help with balance.
Generating less heat on the way down, I pulled my sweater on, and the extra pressure drove the glochids on the fruit in my pocket into my chest, so I transferred them to my pack, and eventually tossed them away. But by then, the damage was done, and I wouldn’t be able to remove them from my chest until I got home.
Much worse, the chronic inflammation in the ball of my left foot had been triggered in the past week – by a new exercise the physical therapist had given me – and this more challenging hike was bringing it out. So I had three thousand feet to descend with two bad legs, slowing me down and forcing me to rely more on the poles, which in turn put more strain on my injured shoulder. I’d had to take more pain pills in the past three days than ever before.
This also highlights another failure of our healthcare system – a hard one to understand, an impossible one to solve. Individualist and competitive social behavior lead to a capitalist economy and the nation-state, imperialism produces reductive science, and the result is healthcare institutions that compete against each other and specialist practitioners that are ignorant outside their fields. So with multiple injuries and health conditions, I’m treated at many different facilities by many different providers, none of whom have access to all my information, and none of whom have time, when they see me, to figure out whether their treatments will have negative consequences.
In the end, the only thing I can always depend on is pain pills – opioids, the “evil” that misguided, Puritanical crusaders keep making it harder and harder for us to get. So I ended my hike a starving wreck, with the pain mercifully shifted into the background for a few hours.
